page_title: Chicago American
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Chicago American / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Excerpt of newspaper circulation chart contained in July 24, 1919 issue of Editor &amp; Publisher, excerpt shows Chicago newspapers.
context_page_description: The Chicago American was an afternoon newspaper published in Chicago, under various names until 1974.
context_section_description: The paper's first edition came out on July 4, 1900, as Hearst's Chicago American. It became the Morning American in 1902 with the appearance of an afternoon edition. The morning and Sunday papers were renamed as the Examiner in 1904. James Keeley bought the Chicago Record-Herald and Chicago Inter-Ocean in 1914, merging them into a single newspaper known as the Herald. William Randolph Hearst purchased the paper from Keeley in 1918.
   
    Distribution of the Herald Examiner after 1918 was controlled by gangsters. Dion O'Banion, Vincent Drucci, Hymie Weiss and Bugs Moran first sold the Tribune. They were then recruited by Moses Annenberg, who offered more money to sell the Examiner, later the Herald-Examiner. This "selling" consisted of pressuring stores and news dealers. In 1939, Annenberg was sentenced to three years in prison for fraud and died behind bars.
  The newspaper joined the Associated Press on October 31, 1932.
  Under pressure from his lenders, Hearst consolidated the American and the Herald-Examiner in 1939. It continued as the Chicago Herald-American until 1953 when it became the  Chicago American. The American was bought by the Chicago Tribune in 1956, and was renamed as Chicago's American in 1959.
  As with many other afternoon dailies, the paper suffered in postwar years from declining circulation figures caused in part by television news and in part by population shifts from city to suburbs. The paper continued as an afternoon broadsheet until 1969 when the Tribune converted the paper to the tabloid-format Chicago Today. Measures to bolster the paper were unsuccessful, and Chicago Today published its final issue on September 13, 1974. The Chicago Tribune inherited many of the Today's writers and staff and became a 24-hour operation.
  The American was the product of the merger or acquisition of 14 predecessor newspapers and inherited the tradition and the files of all of them.
  As an afternoon paper, the American was dependent on street sales rather than subscriptions, and it was breaking news that brought street sales. The American was noted for its aggressive reporting. Its editors, writers, and photographers went hard after every story. It was not uncommon for them to pretend to be police officers or public officials to get a story, although many of them could simply talk their way into any place.
  These techniques were usually used legitimately. Reporters demanded information as if they had a right to it, and would often get it. With its connections to news sources and its bravado, the small staff of the American regularly scooped its larger, more respectable afternoon competition, the Chicago Daily News.
  When Frank Lloyd Wright announced plans to build a mile-high building in Chicago, the American stole the drawings and printed them.
  The tradition was exemplified by the longtime night city editor of the American, Harry Romanoff, "Romy," who could create news stories almost at will with only a telephone. He ran the city room at night with the help of two rewrite men (including Mike McGovern, noted below), one night photo editor, a sports desk editor (Brent Musburger's first job out of journalism school) and one night copy boy who "cut and pasted AP and UPI wires for Harry's review). Since the afternoon paper was put together the previous evening, the night city editor was the key news editor. Moreover, "Romy" a stout, cigar-chomping, suspendered, order-barking commander of the city desk, enjoyed the fearful but absolute regard of pressmen, the composing room and the entire night staff of the Tribune Tower, which owned and housed the Chicago's American operations in its final decades.
  One night floods threatened Southern Illinois, and the American did not have a big story for the front page. Romanoff called fire departments and police stations throughout the region, posing as "Captain Parmenter of the state police" (a nonexistent individual), urging them to take action. One fire department, bemused by the call, asked what they should do. "Ring those fire bells! Call out the people!" Romanoff then turned to his r
caption: Circulation figures for Chicago newspapers appearing in Editor & Publisher in 1919.  The American's circulation of 330,216 placed it third in the city, behind the Chicago Tribune (424,026) and Chicago Daily News (386,498), and ahead of the Chicago Herald-Examiner (289,094).
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